


Reverse

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: Harsh Realm
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:10:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If things had happened in quite a different way. And yet not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reverse

There's flowers on the bedside table when she brings him home. He looks at them out of his one good eye, bright and cheerful, and he knows he shouldn't hate them but he does. It sends guilt up like a spike through his chest; she's been so patient and so loving and he shouldn't make things harder for her, but everything's different now, and he's got one good eye and one good leg and half his body is twisted scar tissue. Some skin grafts, some taking, some not, but they can only do so much. He can come home. That's about the best they can do.

"I made chicken for dinner," she says, a brisk cheerfulness in her voice that's utterly forced, and he hates that too. If she could just show what she's really feeling, maybe he'd feel better.

Or maybe not.

"With that gravy you like." She turns to him, hands restlessly smoothing the front of her skirt. "We can eat whenever you want."

"Okay." She won't quite look at him, still. He can tell she's trying, but she can't quite do it except in little bursts, her gaze flickering away again like some kind of fluttering insect. He sighs, looks down at his hands. Half of his right one is pink and shiny with scar tissue. "I think I'd just like to sleep for a while."

"Okay, sweetheart." She's stuttering a little as she says it, and he knows, he knows she'd been hoping he'd want to eat, then maybe he'd want to watch some TV, and they could act like everything is fine even if everything isn't fine, even if nothing will ever be completely fine again.

But he can't do that. He's never been able to lie to her.

She helps him into bed. He hates that she has to help him, and he hates the way she covers him up gently, like he's a child, like he's delicate and needs care. When he closes his eyes he sinks down into the darkness and the fear that in the end, he'll stop hating all these things separately and, for the sake of efficiency, begin to hate her.  


* * *

  
"We could go to the zoo." They're sitting in the living room, and she's got her hands clasped in front of her, and again there's that forced cheerfulness, that forced ease, but when he looks at her clasped hands he can see how white the knuckles are. It's been three weeks of this, three weeks of pain and shame and being helped to the bathroom and being fitted for a prosthetic and driving in silence to physical therapy and tension so intense it's hard to draw breath. He's never exploded at her, about anything, but he thinks it might be inevitable now.

If they could talk about this. If he could figure out how to begin to talk about it.

"We could," he says wearily, staring down, staring at the stump of his knee. The ugliness of it is covered in a pant leg, his prosthetic leaning against the chair next to him. He can still feel his leg. It's tingling, itching faintly. At night it sobs with a low pain, like what's left of him is mourning for what's lost. He'd heard of this, but he hadn't been ready for it.

"But you don't want to." And now there's just a tinge of exasperation in her voice, and he thinks _Finally._

"Not really."

"So what _do_ you want to do, Tom?"

"I don't _know._" He reaches up and scrubs his hands down his face, one side smooth, one side rough and tight, and he wishes he hadn't. He doesn't like to touch his own body anymore. He doesn't like to look in the mirror. It's disorienting. It doesn't feel like his body. "Look, maybe I don't want to do _anything._ I don't know why you're always trying to get me to go out and do shit."

"So you'll just sit in here? Forever? You think that's good for you?"

"I don't know who made you the boss of what's good for me." He drops his hands and glares up at her, tired, angry, frustrated, trying to fight back that little thread of cruelty he can feel deep inside, that willingness to say the things he knows he can to hurt her for no good reason at all. "Look, you wanna get out of the house so bad, _you_ go, 'cause I'm tired of hearing about it."

"Fine." She stands, he envies her how easily she does it in the most instinctive kind of way, and when his gaze falls on her face he can see that her eyes are glistening with tears. They're because of him. He should feel guilty, ashamed, and he supposes he does, but he's spent so much time feeling like that, it's all bled into a kind of dull ache. And under that, he's angry at her. Angry at himself. She doesn't understand, no matter how hard she might try.

There's a certain horror in realizing that the person you love will never be good enough.

"I'll go." She turns, folding her arms across her chest, shoulders hunched like she's been hit or she's expecting to be. "Can't stand being stuck in here like this."

_Stuck._ He watches her go, and when she's gone and he hears the truck pulling out of the driveway he leans back in the chair and closes his eye and bites his lip until the throbbing in his leg and the throbbing in his chest are both down to levels that he can deal with.

She's stuck. She'll always be stuck. She'll always _feel_ stuck, and he'll never really be whole. No California, no little house, no dog. He doesn't see any future in which it could happen. No room for white fucking picket fences.

No future.

Dexter gets up from his spot on the rug, trots over and licks at his hand. When Tom pets him it's also instinctive, and there's no comfort in it. When he opens his good eye the world in front of it is blurred and shifting. He doesn't cry anymore.  


* * *

  
"I can't keep doing this."

She's standing in the doorway and he's sitting on the bed and trying to read, though what he's really doing is staring at the pages until all the words run together into a grey mass and he doesn't have to make sense of them anymore. Dexter is lying where his lower leg would be, and he doesn't even care about that these days. Two months, and everything's kind of settled into the same sort of grey, featureless mass. He gets up, he eats, he showers, he goes to whatever appointments he has. He comes home. He sleeps a lot. He takes some Xanax. Someone at the VA hospital had recommended that he talk to a therapist. He'd smiled hollowly and walked away with the thing that is not and never will be part of him moving numbly with his strides.

It makes sense, he knows it does. But it's also not really an option. He's lost the words he would need.

He looks up at her. He's grateful for the distraction. "Can't do what?"

She runs a hand through her hair, glances away, glances back at him again with her teeth worrying at her lower lip. "This, Tom. You. I just can't..." She sighs and scrubs a hand over her face, her face that's so much more tight and pinched than it used to be. He knows that, and he knows why, but it's a distant kind of knowing, dulled by its constancy. The human mind can only take so much and the heart's not far behind.

"I can't keep trying and trying and getting nothing back. I was trying, in the beginning, but you're not, Tom. You're all... shut down. It's like you came back and you gave up on everything. You gave up on _us._" He's watching her steadily, and he can see the tears in her eyes, and he allows himself to feel a little guilt. But only a little. He knew this was coming. Maybe he was hoping it would come sooner rather than later.

"You never want to do anything. You never want to talk. We haven't had sex in weeks. You don't say 'I love you' anymore." She stares at him, her lips trembling delicately. He remembers when he used to kiss those lips, kiss them forever, devour them and dive into the warmth and the taste of her mouth.

He can't tell her. That he does love her. That he's doing this because he loves her. That if he didn't love her he'd be clinging to her, trying to keep her near him without a thought for her own happiness. She wouldn't understand and so he just looks placidly back at her out of his one good eye, Dexter sleeping by his one remaining foot as if nothing's wrong at all.

"Do you love me, Tom?" She makes a quiet sound, something like a sob, but it's restrained. She's always been graceful. She's never been one to fly into a rage or a fit of passion, and through the coolness and the deep under-sadness, he can't help admiring her. She's stronger than he ever was. "Do you even care?"

He doesn't say anything.

So she turns, shaking her head, and he can tell by the set of her shoulders that she's crying. She walks away and after a few minutes he hears the front door shut. In the morning most of her clothes are gone, and so is she. When she doesn't come back in the evening, he isn't surprised. She's left him the truck, at least.  


* * *

  
He thinks about killing himself, but only in the most vague kind of way. There's still Dexter to think about, and anyway suicide seems so melodramatic. He doesn't want to die. He's just not sure living has any appeal left.

He stays inside. He orders groceries online. He sleeps more and more, grows paler. Once-toned muscles start to atrophy and weaken. He's slipping further and further away from what he used to be. He's not sure who he is anymore. He's not sure that particular information is worth acquiring.  


* * *

  
When it happens, it happens fast. A couple of phone calls, a couple of emails, some confidential materials change hands. He reads them in the dimness his bedroom. When he's done he leans back and closes his eyes. He might feel something like gratitude. It's not suicide. It could be the next best thing.

There's his mother, and he's been shutting her out like the rest. But she's already lost him, even if she doesn't want to accept it yet. Like this... it's cruel. But maybe in the end it's the kindest thing.

In the morning he makes one last call. That afternoon a black towncar arrives to collect him. That evening he's lying back on a cold table with electrodes attached to his head. That same evening, a few seconds later, he opens his eyes—both eyes—into a new world. It's not Heaven or Hell or Purgatory. What it might be is a second chance.  


* * *

  
"Move and you're dead."

The man is tall but not very, muscular but not very, and when he turns slowly Tom is momentarily taken by the blueness of his eyes. Just another soldier, just another sucker, or that's how it might look. But he knows better. There's nothing outwardly impressive about him. But they'll see.

He motions with the gun. "The watch."

The man reaches down, moves like he's going to take the watch off, but it's a feint, he knows it a split second before it happens, and he feels a deep and pleasurable sensation of hope as the man draws his gun in a single swift motion. And they're circling each other, like it's a dance, and in an instant Tom feels two threads in the fabric of the world joining, intertwining, holding together. Stronger together than they ever could be apart. This is where he's supposed to be. This was always where he was supposed to be.

He's grinning over his gun, in spite of himself. "So what's your name, asshole?"

The man looks slightly confused, then wary. Eyes narrowing. "Pinocchio. Mike." He pauses and then his mouth twists in a half sneer. "Wouldn't get smart about it just fucking now, buddy."

Tom laughs, lowers the gun and takes a step back. Even if Mike shot him now, that would be more than okay. "I gotta get smart. So do you." He looks up at the ceiling of the shed. In the distance, and fast approaching, he can hear the thumping whir of rotor blades. "Smart stays alive. C'mon, _Pinocchio._ We gotta get moving."

So they move. A second chance isn't really the right idea, and there's too much he's lost. Maybe he'll never actually be whole again. But when he drags Mike up an embankment and they leap together into the hole in the ground that he's been calling home, it feels like trying. It feels like something worth trying for.


End file.
